Infinite
by BrokePerception
Summary: "I believe this might just be what love is," Hermione whispers to the darkness in which she is well aware Minerva can still hear her, despite the fact she doesn't react.


The light that peeks its way in through the small gaps between the thick red curtains that hold back most of the sunlight and the windows themselves, has become brighter and persistent, which allows Hermione to discern very vague yet detectable shadows. She lets her eyes fall upon a tall, blurry one, where she remembers a full-length mirror to be, and the end of the double bed frame. She wiggles her toes, childishly maybe, and lets a smile touch her lips, as she sees them move despite the little light.

The brunette's cinnamon gaze then bounces off to the pair of feet that's right next to hers, to travel up the length of the woman side-to-side with her and settle on Minerva's mostly-hidden face ── hidden not only by the darkness, but also by the arm that she has, quite casually, draped over her green eyes. Hermione can tell that, by knowledge more than input of any of her senses, her bust still rises and falls a bit too fast ── faster than it would if she had just woken up from her sleep naturally. This morning, however, she was woken by Hermione's lips in her exposed neck and finger tips on her bare nipple.

The messy-haired, cinnamon-eyed witch woke well before Minerva did and took advantage of the quite rare chance presented to her to just listen to the small sounds that came from thin lips and the small, nearly imperceptible, changes in the sight offered to her: a soft sigh against beige satin, a small flutter in closed eyelids, briefly illuminated by the thin streak of sunlight on her still-beautiful yet clearly aged face.

Normally, Minerva McGonagall would without doubt have woken up to such kind of scrutiny ── if not due to her heightened human at least her feline instincts immediately alerting her ── but the raven-haired witch had come to bed very late the night before, due to a meeting that had run past midnight. Hermione could tell she was very tired, if not by the late hour, then by the intensity of the dreaded, annual get-together with the Board of Governors. She woke briefly when the Headmistress pushed the covers aside and slid in beside her, pressed a kiss to her lips and cuddled up next to her, wordlessly.

"I believe this might just be what love is," Hermione whispers to the darkness in which she is well aware Minerva can still hear her, despite the fact she doesn't react. Minerva doesn't ask her what or why but just waits for her to continue. "I believe that we all just grow up with this idea of what love is, what it can be and what it should be, and I believe that, based on what we get to see and hear when we grow towards adulthood, our expectations sort of change. It is an idea that we can't put in words or place, though, and... Well, I don't know how to say it, but I feel like, when you first fall in love with a man or a woman and have a relationship, while it doesn't get easier at all to explain, the idea you've had of love becomes more vast somehow..." Hermione thought. "You can't describe love itself, but any and all feelings that you, yourself, associate with it, you can, like an experience you've had ── which it technically is, I guess. I believe 'love' is the most personal of feelings that exists."

When she feels more than sees or hears Minerva turn on her side, gentle rustlings sound through the room. Both of them stay quiet, for several long moments, until Minerva speaks at last, "I'm curious, as to which feelings you would use to describe love."

It is as if Minerva can hear a small smile pull at her lover's lips as the brunette's mind tears through memory upon memory, of the both of them together, and pulls from them what, exactly, love means for them, for her. "Well, for me," Hermione begins, "it is being able to listen to and watch each other endlessly and never getting tired of it. It is seeing what others can't, nearly imperceptible changes that can be noticed by only one another. It is invincibility and peach, when the rest of the world just... happens. It is a warmth that you can feel in more ways than you ever thought existed," Hermione whispers. "I..."

"I believe it is a kind of endlessness maybe," Minerva contributes. "It is a list of experiences that illustrate what you mean when you, personally, talk of what we all call 'love', that can be started but never truly finished, because it is infinite if you feel it. It is felt in all there is, somehow, no matter how tough love is, no matter how unexpected."

Hermione gently extends her foot and lets it touch Minerva's considerably colder toes. "Maybe that is what it is," she says at last, "It is this realization, that despite what we believe before love crosses our paths in life, it isn't really limited to ideas we may have had as we all grew up, to what we have learned to hope for. It is this epiphany, when you find it ── and truly find it ── that it can't just be described, because it is too immense to do so, and instead... it is infinite."


End file.
